James Cameron Is Taking Credit for Warning Everyone About AI Because ‘Terminator’

I love James Cameron, mainly because I was a teenage girl when his movie Titanic came out, aka the ideal target demographic. I also love him because when he won the Best Director Oscar for Titanic, he got up in front of everyone and screamed a line from the movie: “I’m the king of the world” unironically, which is objectively hilarious. Here, watch, and try not to laugh:

This has set me up for a lifetime appreciation for a man who, if I’m putting it kindly, has a healthy ego. So it’s with that in mind that I share the following news: Cameron is taking credit for warning everyone about the dangers of AI via the 1984 classic, Terminator, which he co-wrote and directed. Per CTV News:

Many of the so-called godfathers of AI have recently issued warnings about the need to regulate the rapidly advancing technology before it poses a larger threat to humanity.

“I absolutely share their concern,” Cameron told CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos in a Canadian exclusive interview ahead of a conversation with his long-time mentor Dr. Joe MacInnis Tuesday.

“I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen,” he said.

If you’re not aware of the plot of The Terminator, stop what you’re doing right now and go watch it because it’s excellent. If you need a refresher, see above. However, I will recap the plot in order to tie everything together: It’s about a sentient cyborg assassin (the titular Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in order to keep her child, John Connor, from ever being born and thus lead a rebellion against the cyborgs in the future. Strictly speaking, the sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a more appropriate parallel to draw, since it revolves around keeping a rudimentary AI system from coming online and thus kicking off the end of the world, but I digress.

So yes, it takes a “healthy ego” to take credit for a sci-fi trope that pre-dates The Terminator by decades. We’ve all made Skynet jokes over the evolution of AI technology but in reality, a lot of people have been warning about the rise of AI via murderous robots. The original Westworld movie came out in 1973, which is about robots becoming sentient at an amusement park and murdering the guests. Hell, Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner came out in 1982, and touched on similar themes of AI masquerading as human, which is based on Phillip K. Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Again, if you think I’m knocking James Cameron, you are sorely mistaken. I love this for him and us. If aliens ever visit us by pulling up a big a** spaceship from below the ocean, he will absolutely take credit for telling us he warned us about aliens, too as if Close Encounters of the Third Kind wasn’t a thing before it; but frankly that one would be more on the nose. (I am of course talking about the 1989 classic The Abyss. Say what you will about Cameron as a person, but you must admit he makes bangers for films.)

Anyway, if you’re wondering what else Cameron thinks about AI, it’s in line with what any same person would think: It will most likely be used to start wars, and it shouldn’t be writing movies. Per the above source:

“I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger,” he said. “I think that we will get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t build it, the other guys are for sure going to build it, and so then it’ll escalate.

“You could imagine an AI in a combat theatre, the whole thing just being fought by the computers at a speed humans can no longer intercede, and you have no ability to deescalate.”

[…]

“I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it … I don’t believe that have something that’s going to move an audience,” he said.

Cameron said while he “certainly wouldn’t be interested” in AI writing his scripts, time will tell the impact they’ll have on the industry.

Say what you will about the man, he’s not wrong about anything quoted above.

(Featured image: Warner Bros.)